Prisoners of their own device

September 25, 2011 - Harry Eagar

Nobody else seems willing to say it, so RtO cannot restate it, but it's obvious, is it not, that the Palestinian bid for United Nations recognition is immoral, cynical and evil.

It's also an insult to the General Assembly. But those guys don't realize when they've been insulted.

The UN resolution that established Israel as a state recognized among other states was a compromise. If the Palestinians (who were not in those days self-aware enough to call themselves Palestinians) felt themselves ill-done-by, the place to seek changes was in the Assembly and in the minds of world opinion.

That is not how they rolled. They resorted to what in the old days was called the arbitrament of arms.

It is only stating the obvious to observe that if you try force and fail, you don't get to go back and claim a case in equity.

Let's say your car is repossessed, and you go to the lender's lot, cut the fence, assault the watchman, hotwire the car and drive it off. And let's say you get caught.

Lots of luck going to court.

Yet that's the essence of the Palestinian appeal: We'll take what we want, and if we cannot handle it, we demand you give it to us.

The difference between the car example and Palestinians, of course, is not only that they wanted the land – not back; they had never had it – but they also intended to kill the Jews.

Ask yourself – better, ask the Palestinians – what the aftermath would have been had their allies won the wars in 1948, 1967 or 1973. They were open going in. They intended to exterminate the Jews.